Reconstructing Professionalism in University Teaching

Symposium and Springboard - September 17th 2001

Workshops

The morning and afternoon workshops will run in parallel. Please consider which one you would like to attend before coming - although note that the rooms we have and the atmosphere we wish to create limits the maximum number at each session.

Morning

Greening the curriculum - approaches to implementation and learning

Roger Downie, Alan Ervine, Bob Matthew, Judy Wilkinson

Should all undergraduates at some time in their course learn about our relationship with the environment?  How can we tackle these complex technical, social, economic and ethical issues - would each discipline offer separate options, or can we envisage an interdisciplinary approach?

Values, purposes and university teaching

Melanie Walker

This workshop assumes that university teaching is essentially an intellectual activity, rather than simply a series of performances to be learnt through some kind of  training.  Teaching is then more than just  the question of giving an adequate performance; if it were we would not feel so deeply or strongly about it.  It also then follows  that the values that inform our teaching and professional identities are not simply technical matters but deeply ethical.  How these values  shape our profesional practices of particular areas of disciplianry expertise is then the issue in reconstructing university teaching and academic professionalism.  The key question to be addressed in this workshop is thus: Why do I teach  my subject the way I do?

What really supports teaching improvements:  what hasn't helped, what would help?

This workshop will consist of a structured discussion, with each point briefly introduced, followed by participant discussion of it, preferably from personal experience.  The overall question is how have teaching improvements come about up to now, what structures and mechanisms would best promote it, and how do current institutions (TQA, ILT, individual genius, the published literature etc.) measure up to this aim?

For instance one possible view might be that invention does and should come from necessity i.e. from recognising problems, and so structures for detecting bad things are and should be central.  A contrary view might be that the established and proposed mechanisms are wholly negative: for remedying problems, while positive innovation is entirely unsupported and left to individual genius;  and we should therefore invent structures that would support it.  In which case, what support would be most effective for innovative teachers? e.g. help in collecting data, help in writing papers in this area, expert advice for redesigning bits of teaching, a few simple techniques e.g. "minute papers", rolling self-review a.k.a. reflective practice.  Answers to this might guide how we develop the new CRHE (Centre for Research in Higher Education) here at Glasgow, which could in part become an association for mutual self-help in developing better teaching.

Learning from the margins: Popular Education

Paolo Freire pioneered methods of education in a very different context from a University.  For Freire, ideas and practice in the world were learned together - but does this method have any relevance for University teachers ?

Afternoon

Business and Barbie: Getting students to think out of the box

Is it fair to get students to think 'out of the box'? This question will underpin the debates and discussions around two examples of teaching students to think and act critically in Management Studies. The workshop will consist of two short presentations of teaching techniques, a rationale for this approach to teaching and engaging economic discourse and questions of social relations, and then a debate about encouraging students to think and act critically..

A simple process for investigating what goes on in your classroom: Bringing together student and teacher perspectives

I will spend about 10 minutes at the beginning of the workshop describing a process I have used to investigate both my own classroom and that of another colleague. I will then share some extracts of anonymised data with you from these investigations and ask you to consider two questions:

1)      What does this data tell you about what might be happening in your classrooms? How might you change your practice - if at all - as a result of this data?

2)      How useful could this process be in helping you develop your own practice?

We will work in both small groups and in the larger group.

Creativity in the classroom?

Alison Phipps

This workshop will look at two instances of using theatrical work as a learning tool for students, that have grown within and out of the project that produced the book. It will look at the blocks to creating or maintaining such spaces in teaching, the desirability of such work and allow participants to think about the possibilities of creating such spaces in their own disciplinary and departmental contexts.

Teaching Languages through Culture

Patrick Collins has taught a variety of languages in a  bewildering range of institutions - but always from the starting point that language is learned through cultural encounters. How do we maintain that vision of language learning in the face of insistent instrumental demands?